Visit Neo Venezia in ARIA

Well well well…… it’s been a while since my last anime review isn’t it? Okay then, this time I’ll review an anime titled ARIA (both ARIA the animation and ARIA the natural). The genre would be piece-of-life drama I guess.

The story took place in a planet called Aqua, a man-made planet outside earth (which they called Man-home). As you could already guessed by the name, this planet is covered with water, thus the city is called Neo Venezia. Since it’s not earth, the wheather and the gravity are also need to be maintained by people who in charged of that. Among all of them there will be 2 people got involved in the story: Akatsuki the Salamander (who control the wheather), and Albert or Al (who control the gravity).

The main story of ARIA is about daily life of Akari Mizunashi, a young gondola rower (which is called Undine) who will also act as a tour guide. She is Alicia Florence’s apprentice, who works in Aria Company. Alicia is well known as one of the famous Three Legendary Undine Fairy. It’s been Aria company’s policy to only have 2 Undine at one time. So that mean, only Alicia (as the senior Undine) and Akari (as the junior Undine) there, plus their president. There’s a believe in Neo Venezia, that a cat with blue eyes will protect a gondola from harm. Thus every gondola company will have one cat as their president. In Neo Venezia, there’re 3 famous gondola company: Aria, Himeya, and Orange Planet. While Aria will only have 2 Undine, Himeya and Orange Planet are a big company with lots of Undine. In each company, there’s one person who is also include in Three Legendary Undine Fairy.

So basically, all episodes in Aria will tell stories around Akari and her friends: Aika S Granzchesta from Himeya, and Alice Carrol from Orange Planet. All of them are Undine apprentice, thus the story usually tells around how they practice and how they spent their holiday or just their daily activities and interaction with other people. Btw, the other Fairies are both Aika and Alice’s senior: Akira E Ferrari, and Athena Glory. These three people are apparently childhood friends, just like Akari, Aika and Alice.

Overall Aria is a nice anime, but with that kind of story, it make me bored, because there’s not much characters problem or something like that, that will thickens the plot. It’s just peacefull daily life. Eventhough of course I always pray for peacefull life for all people in this world of ours, that’s not what I want to watch in a movie/anime. But this series got their own fans, and I can’t blame them. The pictures are awesome!! And this story really made you want to visit Aqua, and enjoy the beautiful Neo Venezia, with an Undine as your guide. The anime also has great songs, that bring you peacefullness.

And for favourite character, I really like Alice Carrol with her unique personality. She is typicall smart/talented girl with difficulties to make social contact. She also sometime make her life more difficult with her own rules or something XD Other than that, her interaction with her clumsy senior Athena, is also what I always longed to see. Their interactions is by far the most amusing for me. How Athena tried her best to teach and understand her junior, and how Alice act around her seniors (who usually looked a bit harsh) but actually she really loved her senior. It’s just too cute…… <3

Anyway, overall Aria is a good anime to fill your free time ^_^